Meanwhile the Thai Police are having a War On Crime, mainly targeting drugs usage across Thailand, aiming for a 20% decrease in crime in the next 3 months.

Besides all that things are running pretty much standard here in Thailand. Honestly living here makes you feel alive, nothing like any of this ever happens back 'home'. But you know what? The way the Thai people deal with all this is amazing, the media are calm, things will be fine.

OK, looks like emergency top level negotiations have secured a cease fire at about 7.30pm, so that was approximately 4.5 hrs of fighting, rockets, artillery barrages and mortar fire between the two armies. Pretty intense for the local residents I guess, well considering their school was blown up, huts set on fire and at least on confirmed artillery death "well inside" the Thai border.

Well it has rolled around again - all christians go out now and in a shopping frenzy reminiscent of berserker Vikings discovering unprotected church gold on the shores of England, celebrate by going out to the Xmas sales with mobs of other mind controlled shopping zombies and putting yourself in credit card debt to 'prove' you love your family.... because that is what the TV tells you to do.

Right now Thailand is about 12 hours away from open civil war. This is not some retoric, there are armed troops fighting armed troops in hte streets of Bangkok right now and for the last 4 days.... again.

The official Army has assassinated one of the 'Red Shirt' political leaders who was shot but snipers and hit by 2 bullets in the head in the middle of a crowd while conducting an interview with foreign mdeia correspondents. The idea is to 'cut the head off the snake', but I am concerned that they just made a martyr.

Official figures for the dead are now at 35, I think the real figures are about 10 times that figure, the media is under tight control with Twitter, Facebook and Youtube giving a lot of 'on the ground' uncontrolled coverage.

Government troops have set up a "Live Fire Zone" where they are firing real bullets at anyone they deem necessary to take out..... or anyone unlucky enough to put his head out a window, or even stand near a window...

Eating dog has been a part of many cultures for hundreds, even thousands of years. If you were starving, not 'starving' in the Western sense of the word (hungry), but starving in the real sense of the word (as in you are going to die) and Fido was sitting in the corner chewing a bone he'd buried last year. Wouldn't you be looking at Fido and seeing a big lump of delicious, life saving, dog meat? Dog meat, sorry Fido, would be straight in the pot.

And so there I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Northern China, filming in the Hindi movie Chandni Chowk To China and I was handed the menu - Dog Meat - right there on the menu. The Chinese lady says to me "Do you eat dog?" with a sly smile knowing Westerners don't eat dog.

Here I took a photo of the menu with dog meat, I didn't take a photo of the dog meat, but I did take a pic of the menu...

A couple of months ago we had an armed robber hold the girl in the apartment next to mine at gun point and try to rob her. She screamed, which awoke me and alerted some other residents.

As soon as I heard the scream I jumped up out of bed, ran to the door and heard Ski, the apartment owner call "Stop him." I knew something was up.

Dressed only in red boardshorts I raced dopwnstairs to find a ladyboy thickset Thai fellow struggling with one transgender resident and Ski, the American owner helping. I pushed them both out of the way and...

Flicking though TV stations while waiting bored in a hotel room I recently saw an episode of the Biggest Loser - it's the TV show where 'teams' of obese people compete against other teams to lose the most weight each week. I good loss in a week is about 6lbs, which is 3kg.

Well in the last 6 days I lost 13kg which is 28.6lbs!!!

Want to know the 'magic' supplement that caused this massive weight loss?

At Emporium the other night after watching the Thai epic movie Narusuan Part 2 (3 parts 3.5 hrs long each detailing the life of the king that formed Siam (now Thailand) out of warring city states) as we were leaving my girlfriend turned to me and asked if we needed anything from the convenience store on the way home, she wanted to get some washing powder.

As we walked past the cosmetics section in a large upperclass department store of Bangkok. I told my girlfriend 'Pohm ow Nam Hoi' (I want Oyster sauce), she went red, several women nearby looked at me....

Several months ago I went on a short holiday for a week to visit some of the other sites in the region, predominantly I wanted to visit Phnom Penh, Cambodia and have a look at the place in terms of a future base (home).

People who travel to one other country then espouse how great it is and how they want to live there the rest of their life, in my opinion, are making a mistake. What are they basing their judgement on? Experience with 2 countries out of hundreds? Get out and have a good look around before you make your decision on where in the world you want to live. Also note that a 2 day package tour does not show you what a country is like at all - it shows you 5 star hotels and a group of tourists taking photos.

So off I went - overland - to get a good look at Cambodia, Phnom Penh and the people....

BBQ Chicken feet anyone?

Part of the Bangkok Public Transport System these suicidal drivers are often the fastest way to get around. Not being a full sized bus they can squeeze into places and out accelerate full size buses, also since they are still bigger than nearly everything on the road they get right of way.

Bangkok Public Transport

Here I am standing just outside the Green Bus number 14, why am I standing outside the bus?